Another girl
by Astaria zen Esperansa
Summary: Prejudice and discrimination can take generations to heal. Two, or even three female knights does not signal equality, as Sandra, the 7th girl to begin a pages training, discovers to her shock.
1. Page: 1

"_All _new pages require a sponsor," Padraig haMinch, training master, informed his charges fiercely. "Again I say – who will sponsor Sandra of the Sand Runners?"

No one spoke. The pages shifted guiltily from foot to foot, shooting awkward glances at each other, but not one of them stepped forward. The girl, Sandra, appeared to shrink into the wall behind her, refusing to look anyone in the eye.

She wasn't particularly tall for a ten year old, but broad shouldered and stocky.

It was her clothes that drew people's attention. She wore not only a loose desert burnoose with the hood up, but a face veil, and a long skirt. It seemed so unlikely that such a girl would adapt to life as a page in the palace. How could she train in those clothes? Besides that, she was simply too outlandish, too different, for the pages to accept.

"I am prepared to stand here all night to find Sandra a sponsor," Lord haMinch warned them, his voice cutting through the silence. Although he might be a conservative, his exacting standards of honour and discipline insisted that Sandra should be treated exactly the same as the boys.

It was nearly ten years since Keladry of Mindelan had been knighted, and only five since a third woman, Fianora of awegyh, had completed her training. There were currently two female squires, and a single page, Jordy of Marti's Hill. The training master had expected _her_ to sponsor the new comer. He'd always assumed there was a feeling of sisterhood between female warriors. Clearly not; Jordy was eyeing the girl with as much dislike as her class mates.

Damn them all! He thought to himself. Why did the girl come here in the first place? She was obviously no warrior; probably run home crying before the week was through.

"Very well," he sighed, after nearly half an hour of waiting. "All of the forth year pages without a younger student to sponsor will share this duty. Jordy, you will care for her until the end of the first day of training. Liam for two days after that, Roald for the next two days. Is that clear?"

A murmur of accent filled the space.

"Then go!" he ordered them angrily.

The youths fled, Jordy dragging her bewildered charge behind her. Hopefully the older pages would treat her fairly; at any rate, it was the best he could do, so he put it from his mind.


	2. Page: 2

Sandra scrambled to keep up with her new sponsor as they sprinted through the winding corridors of a palace. How would she learn her way around in just one week? The buildings were huge, a disorganised jumble of strange rooms with even stranger names.

As she was discovering to her shame, her grip of the Tortalen language wasn't nearly as good as she'd thought. If people would only speak at a reasonable speed and enunciate clearly she might be able to communicate. But she couldn't even hear half the words, let alone translate them.

"This's the mess hall," Jordy muttered rebelliously, furious that she'd been dumped with the frankly weird Bazhire girl for three whole days.

Mess hall? What is mess hall? Sandra wondered silently, but didn't dare to try asking.

Fortunately, it soon became obvious that the mess hall was simply where people ate. She picked her way slowly through the unfamiliar foods, longing for the comfort of her tribes fire, and the company of her peers. She had barely finished when Jordy grabbed her arm again, roughly propelling her up the stairs to her room.

"Thank you!" Sandra called softly after her sponsor's retreating back. "Goodbye! I'll see you tomorrow!"

But Jordy didn't reply, or even acknowledge her. Finally alone Sandra crumpled to the floor choking back tears. She would not cry.


	3. Page: 3

Jordy of Marti's Hill woke with a groan. She hated mornings, always putting off getting out of bed until the last possible minute. Judging by the bright sunlight she was already running late. Just what she needed! She groaned again as she rolled out of bed and threw her clothes on.

"That new kid better not slow me down," she muttered under her breathe, sprinting out of the room to find Sandra standing outside waiting for her.

"Good morning," said Sandra, slowly and carefully.

Jordy blinked stupidly, still barely awake.

"I'm going to get something to eat. You coming?" she queried sharply.

"Yes, please," Sandra replied as Jordy headed off down the corridor at a slow trot. Jordy lead the way to the mess hall where she wolfed down a hasty breakfast then sat tapping her feet impatiently while her charge finished eating.

"I'm supposed to show you around," Jordy told the younger girl, who stared at her blankly; Jordy was starting to wonder of she was a bit slow. "I'll show you the classrooms, the training yard and stables, the library. Oh, and I'll take you to the palace tailors for a uniform. After that you're on your own. OK?"

Sandra continued to stare vacantly. Jordy towed her out of the hall with a sigh. She was already bored stiff, and there was a long morning ahead of them.

Three hours later Sandra stood nervously in front of her sponsor, a brand new pages uniform on her back. Sandra had insisted, very vocally, on continuing to wear the burnoose and veil over it, which Jordy thought looked exceedingly odd. Impractical, too, particularly for a fighter. How would she see an attacker coming at her from the side?

"You're different enough without making it obvious, you know," Jordy warned her dryly, leading her back towards the pages wing. She could tell the younger girl felt uncomfortable, but didn't care enough to do anything about it. Instead she dumped Sandra back in the pages wing, promising to come and fetch her in time for supper.

Jordy raced off down the corridor with a whoop of joy, the faintest touch of guilt stinging her heart.


	4. Page: 4

"Jordy?" Sandra called through the locked door. She still wore her practice clothes, streaked with sweat and grime from her first day of training. Her veil hung crookedly across half her face. Every inch of her posture reeked of weariness and desperation.

Jordy grumbled half heartedly for a few minutes, then yelled back.

"Come in!" The instant Sandra stepped across the threshold she queried briskly, if a little sharply, "What do you want?"

"You saw me in training today?" Sandra asked hesitantly.

"Yeah," Jordy sighed. "Frankly, you sucked. What of it? Most first years suck."

Sandra caught little more than the derisive tone, but made a guess at the meaning of Jordy's words.

"I was worse than the others," she pointed out softly.

"I know," replied Jordy. "What do you want from me?"

"Teach me," Sandra challenged her, trying to keep her voice steady despite her nerves.

Jordy muttered an oath under her breath before she answered.

"You want my advice, kid?" Jordy asked, her tone somewhere between friendly, protective and patronising. "Leave. There's places you could go; a convent would take you, maybe even a university. Or continue training and go for the Queen's riders in a few years time."

Sandra shook her head fiercely, her expression stubborn.

"Good," Jordy said, after a pause, smiling at her for the first time. "You pass the first test; if you let a little thing like that put you off, you wouldn't have a hope in hell. Personally, I don't give a sh*t about you, but you're making everyone who argued for your right to a place look bad so I've agreed to help you out for their sakes. OK?"

This time Sandra nodded, mute with nerves. At least Jordy didn't seem angry or discouraging any more, but she still didn't get what was going on.

"Fetch your staff, then, I haven't got all day!" the older page grumbled, the faintest of smiles brushing her lips.

------------------

The next few weeks proved almost as tough for Sandra as her gruelling journey through the desert to reach the palace. Between normal training, extra help with her fighting from Jordy and her own efforts to learn to read and write the Tortallen language she never seemed to have a free moment.

Not that she had anything to do with her free time if she ever got any. The other pages had been consistently indifferent; never particularly cruel or unkind, but all of them avoided spending time with her. Even Jordy rarely spoke with her outside their lessons. Other pages used free time to visit various amusements in the city that Sandra didn't have the spare coin for. All of the money she'd brought south with her had been used to pay the Palace for her training.

Despite everything, her skills improved at a snails pace. After a few weeks she could read simple passages aloud, painfully slowly with plentiful mistakes. After three months of training, Jordy declared her fighting "passable" and instructed her to continue practicing alone.

She'd thought she was lonely before she came here, never having a close friend, spending most of her time confined to the family tent as a punishment for misbehaviour. Now she was being completely ignored, rarely even being punished, never being praised or corrected.

As hard as she worked, Sandra did not keep up. Soon other pages avoided partnering her, knowing they would learn little competing against a slow, clumsy first year. Depressed, she allowed her practice routine to become erratic. At times, filled with desperation, or even optimism, she rose long before dawn to practice, or worked late into the night. Often she simply lay on her bead staring angrily at her ceiling, wishing she was far away from this place.

Maybe, if things had been different, she'd have given up; other girl's had done it before. But if she didn't succeed, all the sacrifices she'd made to get there would be wasted. Besides, she didn't dare return to the desert now. Not after what she'd done.


End file.
